May. 19, 2017, 4:50 p.m.

President Trump told a pair of Russian envoys that his abrupt decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey — whom he described as “crazy, a real nut job” — had relieved “great pressure” on him because of the Russia investigation, according to a published report.

Adding to Trump’s cascading legal and political woes, the FBI investigation reached directly into the White House for the first time Friday with a separate report that an unnamed Trump aide is under federal scrutiny as a person of significant interest.

The White House did not dispute either account, which created a new furor just as Trump was taking off from Andrews Air Force Base on his first official trip overseas, a nine-day visit to five countries in the Middle East and Europe.

Aug. 2, 2017, 9:11 a.m.

The Boy Scouts denied Wednesday that the head of the youth organization called President Donald Trump to praise his recent politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday, "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful." Politico published the transcript of the interview.

"We are unaware of any such call," the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither of the organization's two top leaders — President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh — had placed such a call.

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Jun. 6, 2017, 6:43 a.m.

The mayor of London has reiterated his calls for President Trump’s state visit to Britain to be canceled in the wake of the city's terrorist incident, saying his policies “go against everything we stand for.”

The war of words between the two leaders intensified further Monday evening after Trump criticized Mayor Sadiq Khan's response to the London Bridge terrorist attack in two tweets, and the mayor said Trump should not be welcomed in the capital.

“Since Saturday I’ve been working with the police, with the emergency services, with the government and others to deal with the horrific attack on Saturday,” Khan said Monday evening. “I just haven’t got the time to deal with tweets from Donald Trump.”

Jun. 1, 2017, 9:18 a.m.

John Dean is a connoisseur of coverups, a savant of scandal, so he can more than imagine what it’s like inside the Trump White House right now.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said, presiding in a high-backed leather wing chair off the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Not just for those in the headlines — political strategist Steve Bannon, jack-of-many-duties Jared Kushner — but for their unsung assistants and secretaries as well.

“They don’t know what their jeopardy is. They don’t know what they’re looking at. They don’t know if they’re a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. They don’t know whether to hire lawyers or not, how they’re going to pay for them if they do,” Dean said in a crisp law-counsel cadence. “It’s an unpleasant place.”

Jun. 1, 2017, 4:39 a.m.

President Trump plans to bring weeks of indecision over climate change policy to a close this afternoon, announcing if he will withdraw the U.S. from the international agreement on climate change reached in Paris in 2015.

I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M. The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

May. 31, 2017, 8:19 p.m.

President Trump sparked a global kerfuffle over “covfefe” with his bizarrely truncated tweet just minutes into Wednesday, spawning countless jokes across Twitter but also more serious questions for which the White House gave no answers.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer, during an unusually short 11-minute briefing in which he insisted he not be on camera, declined to give any explanation for Trump's tweet posted just after midnight. Nor would he translate what the president was trying to say in the garbled message that broke off midsentence.

But Spicer told reporters that the public should not be concerned that the president sent what the questioner called “somewhat of an incoherent tweet.”

May. 31, 2017, 4:02 p.m.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is launching a new political action committee, a platform that will allow him to provide help to favored candidates and, inevitably, boost speculation about a possible run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

The organization, which Biden is calling American Possibilities, will be staffed by a former top political aide to the vice president, Greg Schultz, who is also a veteran of President Obama's reelection campaign.

The PAC will allow Biden to raise money that he can use to travel the country, contribute to candidates in governor's races this year and congressional and state races in 2018 and generally do the sorts of things that aspiring politicians do to keep their names in the headlines.

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May. 31, 2017, 2:29 p.m.

The special counsel investigating possible links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign has cleared former FBI Director James Comey to testify before a congressional committee about his contacts with President Trump, according to an associate close to Comey.

Comey met with Robert S. Mueller III, whom the Justice Department appointed on May 17 to investigate any Russian ties to the Trump campaign, and Mueller said he had no problems with Comey's testifying, the associate said.

Trump abruptly fired Comey as head of the FBI on May 9. The president later said in an interview on NBC News that he was concerned about the FBI investigation into what he called the "Russia thing."

President Trump hasn’t made a final decision on whether the U.S. will quit the Paris Accord on climate change, but White House officials indicated Wednesday that he was headed in that direction, setting off a worldwide reaction.

A flurry of leaks, counter-leaks and public statements thrust back into the spotlight a decision that has been agonized and untidy even by the standards of a White House known for internal drama.

Wednesday morning, when officials told some news organizations that Trump had settled on pulling out of the climate agreement, seemingly everyone in the world jumped in to try to influence or spin his decision, from the Chinese government to the coal industry to the state of California.

Six months after President Trump breached long-standing political boundaries to win the White House, the nation’s major political parties still muddle in his wake.

On the sun-swept lawn of the Hotel del Coronado two weeks ago, national Republican leaders sipped cocktails and listened to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, one of the party’s brightest lights in the most populous state, praise a brand of moderate Republicanism that looks nothing like the versions coming out of Washington — either the populism of the president or the more orthodox conservatism of congressional leaders.

A week later, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez talked in a Sacramento interview of the “remarkably constructive” debate underway in his party, characterizing its divisions as largely in the past. Within hours, he and other party leaders were booed as they welcomed delegates to a state convention that would be filled with persistent internal warfare on healthcare and other issues.